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According to bestselling author Whitley Strieber, his contact with strange aliens did not end with the release of his controversial book, Communion. Instead, the "visitors" kept coming. In Transformation, Strieber challenges his own fear for a triumphant breakthrough in understanding. Soon to be a movie. HC: Morrow. (Nonfiction).

More About the Author

I publish both fiction and nonfiction. My most famous works of fiction are the Wolfen, the Hunger, Warday (with James Kunetka), Superstorm (with Art Bell), Majestic and the Grays.

My best-known works of nonfiction are Communion and the Communion series: Transformation, Breakthrough, Confirmation, the Secret School and Solving the Communion Enigma. I've also published the Key and have just finished Super Natural: a New Vision of the Unexplained with Rice University Religion Chair Jeffry J. Kripal. It will be published by Tarcher/Penguin in February of 2016.

I had a close encounter of the third kind in December of 1985. This was universally taken to be an encounter with aliens, and I became the media's poster boy for alien abduction. The fact that I had prefaced Communion with ""the enigmatic presence of the human mind winks back from the dark" was entirely ignored.

I do not understand what causes the abduction experience, but I do know that it is not presently identified and is in need of study, as is the whole area of what is generally called "the paranormal." This is why Jeff and I have written Super Natural. It is time to go beyond the millennia long debate about whether or not the paranormal is real and find out what it is.

This is why Tarcher is called Super Natural the most important book on the subject since Charles Fort published the Book of the Damned in 1919.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

This book is the most compelling book about Alien Encounters that I have ever read. It is a brutally honest account of one man's struggle for complete understanding of what is happening to him. I have been a critic of Strieber's more recent books. This, his second book of the Visitor Phenomenon, better captures his feelings while he still had an honest perception of them.

This book was written concurrently with the author's international bestseller "Communion" and published just one year later. It turns out Strieber had always intended for his exploration of what happened to him with the visitors to become a publishing series, starting with "Communion" (which is genuinely worth reading) and continuing through further volumes, which sold far less well and are not so highly regarded.

Whereas "Communion" has a simple, visceral power and reads as a coherent, chronological narrative about the author's experiences with the visitors, "Transformation" is more a collection of recollections and speculations which didn't make it into the first book. It jumps from one idea to another and is less focussed than the first volume, though it does contain some interesting stuff. Further abductions both of Whitley and his son Andrew (whose real name is used in this book) are described, some of which do read as dream-like; their reality is degraded by the uncomfortable fact that, whereas thousands of abduction accounts from other abductees describe exactly the same beings and processes, Strieber's are in many details unique and different. This is usually a red flag, and lends support to the contention expressed by many that Strieber "has a hard time telling fact from fiction."

At the core of "Transformation" is the author's struggle to find the meaning of the experience, and here he goes way off the map. He journeys into metaphysical and rather new-age territory as he comes to believe the visitors recycle souls, and that the Earth is a kind of "school." There are echoes of Jim Sparks' writings in the self-indulgent, obsessively introspective narcissism which characterises much of the book's content.Read more ›

I loved this book, it is full of revelations about the mysteries of the human soul, and reveals that the universe is much bigger and multifaceted than the average man or woman could have ever guessed. This book is very deep, and has a definite spiritual feel to it. The book is a non fiction but poetic account of a man named Whitley Strieber, who has been abducted by aliens, numerous times throughout his entire life, beginning when he was a young boy. Transformation is highly literate, and extremely well written. It is never dull, a true page turner. The book reveals how Whitley Strieber the most famous abductee in America has been transformed both mentally and spiritually by his abduction experiences. Highly recommended to anyone interested in UFOs, alien abductions, the new age, freemasons, life on other planets, reincarnation, God and spirituality, as well as the deepest insights into the human psyche.

Transformation is one of the most interesting books about alien abduction out there. Strieber provides lots more detail than he did in Communion, and the number of witnesses mentioned raises the question that this might all be real. Strieber isn't, to my reading, being an advocate for alien abduction here, so much as reporting his perceptions and asking the question, what is going on? I have to admit that I picked this up as a used book, but I'm inspired to write this because it's also a useful book, especially for anybody whose interested in the alien phenomenon but doesn't want to be hit over the head with theories.

Whitley Strieber felt the compulsion to further explore the events he described in Communion and clear up some facts. He only makes the reader doubt him more. More hearsay and nothing truly concrete, unless you take the author's continual statements of truthfulness at face value. Will frustrate even the most forgiving of readers. I still found it interesting reading, but just barely.

Not many people realized that Whitley Strieber's close encounters continued after he published communion, but they did. This book offers an outline of what happened next,and includes some very weird stuff, such as the "nine knocks" segment, which details an apparent visit that was completely physical in its nature. But Strieber never varies from what has becomea lifelong assertion that, despite the evidence, until there's proof positive, the whole area of aliens and close encounters has to be kept in question. A provocative, refreshing book.